Writers' Chasm

So on occasion in this e-book revolution, people bring up how illegally shared music is hurting the music industry. And how illegally shared e-books will hurt the publishing industry. I won't deny that. But I would like to point out a MAJOR difference between CDs and illegally downloaded music, and books and e-books. One CD = about $20 = about 15 songs You're not going to like ALL of those songs. You may only want to ever listen to one or two. There's a reason why I've only bought maybe five CDs in my entire life. And that's it. I don't like a song well enough to pay $20 for it and a bunch of songs that I don't like. You can't do that with a book. If you buy a book, it's because you want to read the WHOLE book. You don't buy a book, read the fifteenth chapter, and then set it on the shelf for the time when you want to read that chapter again (unless you're my mom, but she's crazy that way). And that concludes my rant of the week.

In 9 to 11 days, I will once again be on the laptop! :D And then all shall be right in my world again. Anyway. Today I was thinking about senioritis. And what I was going to blog about. So I've decided to blog about senioritis. I promise this will be writing related. Somehow. For those of you that don't know what senioritis is. It's a disease. The symptoms are a complete loss of all desire to do work for school. Or go to school. These desires are usually replaced by an urge to stay at home and do absolutely nothing. There is no known cure. Senioritis doesn't actually exist. Unless you have it, then you swear that it should be in medical journals everywhere. I have chronic senioritis. I like to joke that I've had it since I was a freshman. Despite it's name, senioritis can affect students of any age, though typically targets those in high school under high stress that are almost done with their time, such as juniors and seniors. How does this relate to writing? ...

This week's Road Trip Wednesday at YA Highway is: If you could be any character in a book, who would you be? Um. *thinks* *thinks some more* This is a really tough one. Mostly because there are SO many awesome characters out there. If I could, I'd be Hermione in a Dramione fanfic, but I don't really think that counts. Oh, I know! I'd be Daine from Wild Magic. Particularly around the end of Realms of the Gods. She's strong, she can talk and heal animals, and she lives in Tortall. Numair doesn't hurt either. Either that or Ashleigh from the Thoroughbreds series. Because she has Mike and gets to own and race Throughbreds. And last but not least, I'd be Annabeth. I don't think I really need to say any more. She's insanely smart, the daughter of Athena, AND she has Percy. Those would be my top three choices. I could probably be here all day listing them off as I think of them, but that'd be long and boring. So I'll cut it off ther...

Happy (not) Monday morning! The laptop still isn't back. I'm about ready to explode from lack of computer time. It's not even in the shop yet. So I started reading Shadowland on Friday. I'm not sure how good an idea this is because Blue Moon almost made me throw a book out the window, but I have to know how the story continues so I'm reading it anyway. The good news is, this one's actually mine so I can throw it at the wall if I deem it necessary. And then I started thinking about how a lot of books seem to have confused obsession and love. Love is NOT constantly thinking about how you can't live without someone. Love is NOT falling into an untouchable depression for six months and then trying to kill yourself because you have nothing to live for. Love is NOT announcing yourself soul mates within five minutes of meeting the person. (Let the records show that I do believe in love at first sight, but love at first sight doesn't mean you're going to ma...

I was thinking about Kindles the other day again. I'm on the fence about the e-book revolution. I love print books and I don't know how I could live without them, but then there's just something appealing about having a cute little e-book reader with all the things I'm reading on it. But I'm not going to talk about the advantages of a Kindle over a print book or how Kindles are ruining the publishing industry today. Mostly because I'm not even close to being qualified to do that and there are hundreds of posts out there dealing with those very subjects and more by people that are. No, today I'm going to talk about the things that you just can't get with a Kindle. 1. Think back to the time you were a child. Before you could read. Instead you'd just flip through the books and look at the pictures with joy. Maybe you made up your own story to go along with them. Maybe you begged your parents to read it to you. That's one thing you just can't do ...

Gone by Lisa McMann Yes, I got my hands on Gone. Three letters: O.M.G. I LOVE IT! I read it in two hours. Without stopping. And it definitely didn't seem like I'd been reading that long. I wanted to murder Janie, love Cabe, and I also love Captain. She's not in it as much as she is in previous books, but she's still one of my favorite characters. I laughed, I cried, I threatened to murder Janie (repeatedly). Now that's a sign of a good book. I love the addition of Janie's father. I spent two books wondering constantly who he was and now I finally got to find out. Also, I'm Team Cabe now. Just saying. I love him.

I'm doing two reviews of LT. This first one is almost completely disregarding what I know from the book. The second one covers everything that I can think of that they changed. Both have spoilers, the second one more than the first. The first one was written while I was still on my post-movie high just so you know. Disregarding the book: It was great! Special effects were amazing, I still hated some parts of it because they didn't make a lot of sense (or that might just be the book talking). I'm definitely getting this one on DVD. I haven't decided yet how I feel about Luke. He's cute and all, but I still can't decide if I want to push him off the Empire State Building or love him. I love Annabeth though, she's awesome. Though I wish they'd emphasized her more of a daughter of Athena, the goddess of wisdom than the goddess of war. Oh, and Percy and Luke's fight on the Empire State Building: epic! 7/10 Regarding the book: Things that were Added: The ...

Okay long story short: my laptop's broken again, the blame is once again falling on me, and now I'm restricted to two or three hours a night on a slightly ancient (in computer years) desktop. Therefore, I'm afraid I have to suspend Week in Shorts indefinitely. I'll try to find time to do them, but I don't think I'm going to be able to unless all I'm going to use my hours for is blog reading. :( Regular blogging will continue as normal because it doesn't take very long to write up a blog post and those can be set to auto-post at the beginning of the week. Hopefully we'll get this whole thing straightened out soon and I'll be able to go back to my regular blogging and writing, but until then I have to make some cuts if I want to get anything done at all.

The Dark Divine by Bree Despain Grace Divine, daughter of the local pastor, always knew something terrible happened the night Daniel Kalbi disappeared--the night she found her brother Jude collapsed on the porch, covered in his own blood--but she has no idea what a truly monstrous secret that night held. The memories her family has tried to bury resurface when Daniel returns, three years later, and enrolls in Grace and Jude's high school. Despite promising Jude she'll stay away, Grace cannot deny her attraction to Daniel's shocking artistic abilities, his way of getting her to look at the world from new angles, and the strange, hungry glint in his eyes. The closer Grace gets to Daniel, the more she jeopardizes her life, as her actions stir resentment in Jude and drive him to embrace the ancient evil Daniel unleashed that horrific night. Grace must discover the truth behind the boy's dark secret...and the cure that can save the ones she loves. But she may have to la...

It's a beautiful snow day over here this morning! :) Which means time to relax, kick back, and frantically try to catch up with everything on my to do list. Each week YA Highway asks a question on their blog and then each of the contributors post an answer on their individual blogs. This week's question was: What's your favorite display of affection in a YA? This can be of any sort--romantic, friendship, family, etc) Wow. I almost had more ideas for this one than I did for the book covers. There are just SO many awesome choices! These are my top five: WARNING: There are some minor Deathly Hallows spoilers in number one. But if you haven't read the book yet and care about reading spoilers, then just go read the book. :D No, seriously, READ IT. 1. Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Come on, you knew it was coming. From the moment they became friends to the end of the seventh book, they were a team. They went through everything together (except for the brief hiatus fo...

GONE COMES OUT TOMORROW! *bounces off the walls* Don't know when I'm getting it, but I can't. wait! Last night I had the strange urge to put the laptop away, curl up in bed with the electric blanket, and just read a book. Out of my stack I decided to read Shiver. Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater I started this beautiful book at eight p.m. I went to bed at one a.m. even though I had to be up at eight the next morning. I don't even remember the last time I read a book straight through without stopping for more than a few minutes. It might've been Deathly Hallows whenever that came out. *fangirl squeals* Okay, I've got that out of the way. I love this spin on werewolves. It's just an awesome idea. There are some parts I'm not sure about, like how fast Sam and Grace's relationship progressed after they met properly. I do love the characters and how well-rounded they are, however. You can have Jacob, I'm officially Team Sam. Also, some parts of the story ...

Happy Saturday morning everyone! I'm sick this weekend. :( Which sucks. You'd think that would equal more writing time, but somehow it doesn't. There's a lot of news this week. Well actually there's a lot of news covering one subject. If you haven't been hiding under a rock that past week, I bet you can guess what I'm talking about. If you have, I'm talking about the Macmillan and Amazon war that took place. For a summary of past events we have Kristin's personal summary on the subject as she has authors pubbed by Macmillan and a quick summary from Writer Unboxed . Nathan and Pimp My Novel have their views on the subject. PMN looked at how Apple fits into the grand scheme of things and BookEnds reminded everyone not to forget the author . On Thursday, Kristin had an update on the proceedings , and on Friday, Publisher's Lunch via WB provided news of a possible truce . And in other news, Caren Johnson of Caren Johnson Literary Agency is close...